Adobe open sources Rich Internet Application messaging technology
In yet another sign that the world's leading software companies are losing their inhibitions around open source, Adobe announced today the launch of the open-source BlazeDS project, high-performance remoting and messaging technology used to "connect back-end data sources to rich Internet applications written with its Flex development tool." This is very cool.
BlazeDS will be made available for free under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Adobe will initially hosts the open-source project and next year plans to create a separate site to host BlazeDS and its Flex developer tool which it intends to open source, said Phil Costa, director of product management for Adobe's Platform Business Unit.
The software is not meant to replace other messaging products, such as enterprise service buses, Costa said. Instead, it can get data from messaging software to move data between databases or enterprise applications and Flash clients, he said.
This is an excellent step toward making Adobe's platform more richly relevant for developers. Software vendors can't expect to build products in isolation from the customers and developers who will be using their products. Through this and other open-source moves, Adobe continues to keep itself ahead of the pack, which is surprising given that it is clearly at the top of its game. One would expect it to rest on its laurels.
Great work to Adobe and to Dave McAllister who I suspect (but have yet to confirm) was involved in this.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
